She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it.

You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally.

You could say I don't want for me be seen primarily as a gay writer. I've never hidden my sexuality. It matters that I'm gay, it matters that I'm white, it matters that I'm male, it matters that I'm American. But basically it's just less and less of a big deal.

There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.

Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.

There is just this for consolation: an hour here or there, when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined , though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so.

Accept that, like many men, you have a streak of the homoerotic in you. Why would you, why would anyone, want to be that straight?